


He Corrects, He Corrects

by experimentaldrama



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Childhood, Confusion, Finding the Roots of Complicated Person: A Short Story, Ginzura Week, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:09:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8687092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/experimentaldrama/pseuds/experimentaldrama
Summary: He corrects and corrects and corrects, then Gintoki's thoughts will boil and boil and boil, as he sounds out words that he's never heard before. For Ginzura Week, Day 6: Comfort Zone.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry that it's early and quick, I didn't want to miss Ginzura week.

Every touch.

Every touch!

Every single word, every single funny face. Whenever Katsura slammed a door or opened the curtains. Everything was a correction _,_ Gintoki _knew._ Straighten your clothing, brush your teeth so they do not _rot_ , get the tangles out of your hair please, remember to cook your meat all the way through to not get sal-mon-ella! Remember your kanji, never forget your generals, Hideyoshi-Nobunaga-Ieyasu, hey, listen to Sensei, Gintoki, he has so much to say, Gintoki.

Gintoki! Always say please and thank you when food is offered to you.

He had not known that so many words could spew out of such a small, small mouth before Katsura, and the knowledge did not please. When he pressed up to Gintoki when it was cold, he did not come without _corrections_.

Gintoki glared, Gintoki rolled his eyes, he laughed at others’ expenses, he slept outside, he ignored. Shoyou in particular, although that got him more bumps and lumps on the head than anything else.

While he kneaded rice and kicked the coloring leaves and napped on straw and sharpened a blade and yelled at his schoolmates and woke up in a sweat and exhausted himself and laughed and frowned and smiled and watched birds in the sky and pretended to throw rocks at the birds and chased game and looted random things from a dumpster, in his ear, was how to be perfect, right. The keys to being perfect, at least how Katsura spelled it out, the keys to being refined and _artistic_ and _strong_ and “well-rounded”. The times he spat in Katsura’s face were innumerable, uncountable… endless, and everything in between. He sounded out the syllables; ex-asper-ation.

Because his rice balls could be rounder, he could be raking the leaves instead of making a mess! Don’t nap in the middle of the day, and use the normal whetstone, not a random stone off of the ground. Be kind and reasonable to everyone, and explain all your fears and thoughts thoroughly so they will not bother you in battles, and stop yourself _before_ you collapse, and never let your happinesses or sadnesses show, it would be improper.

Endless, endless complaints, he was worse than Shoyou. At least Shoyou reprimanded him and then left him to fix himself, Zura was a constant, staring at him across a dinner table and sitting on the swing with him for no reason, no reason at all.

Gintoki, don’t bother the locals, they’re kind enough to not report Sensei…

Kind-ness and em-pathy and strength. Two of the three, he had never heard before Katsura, most words he had never heard before Katsura, he didn’t care outside of Katsura, he couldn’t understand Katsura, without the right vocabulary.

Flannel and oak and wind in your face and sweet pastries that not only Gintoki, but everyone had never heard of before this decade. Weird grins from classmates once embarrassing rumors were spread, psychological wars that were waged behind Sensei’s back, the mental handcuffs being placed as they were found out and hooting in the rooms of the victorious.

He stormed into Shoyou’s room and told him to move Katsura away from him in class, deeming him a we ir do and stupid and annoying and stupid! He fumed and stomped less than he gripped his sword and stared quietly.

Curtains and bristle-haired cats that hissed and shrieked but took your milk all the same, elk sometimes, thin lakes that went only thigh deep and raining that went through your socks into your toes.

Honestly, Gintoki was embarrassed to use more than that.

 

He was dismissed coldly, but not without being scolded. Scolded, like always, scalded, somehow, even if all their other treatment was nothing but freezing. Gintoki would not pace, but his thoughts were not less frantic, not less curious.

He wondered with no end, like an equa-tion you could not solve (Katsura used that expression two weeks ago), like a puzzle you tried to cut up once because that piece _should_ fit there but it _didn’t_ and you couldn’t understand why it _wouldn’t_ (he never knew what puzzles were before Shoyou).

Why, why, he could not comprehend-- why, he could not even get away with a joke without his buffer and wall standing in between, looking eyes and oil hair and wit that he never used rightly. Why, why, he could not comprehend why, nothing was more perplexing than to understand people like him-- not avoiding the eyes of soldiers, not hiding among their ranks, not robbing corpses of dignity, certainly not stabbing Amanto through the gut--

Then he remembered; he remembered a lunge, that once lunge, and the red strawberry jam-ish—no, not the same word, though they looked the same, the liquid was _blood_. It was vague, and indis-tinguish-able, and bland. He remembered the lunge, and the blade coming out the other side; his attacker was noticeably aware that was not where a sword belonged. And how he stumbled, stumbled away, sword still through his stomach, scaly tail dragging the dust. And this was much simpler; simpler and lucid, because you sent people away when you did not care, and stayed around them when you did.

Paper boats that floated in tubs of water, and chains of hair ties in a rope. Fingers stained with berry’s juice, but Gintoki already knew which ones were poisonous without Shoyou’s help.

Pine needles and pine leaves that stuck in Katsura’s hair and left him smelling like a bunny, Gintoki would joke. Reflective glass and sunbeams that stained Gintoki’s vision with black and yellow and white; window frames that leaked that sun even inside, inescapable sun. These were all things that Gintoki knew now, and Gintoki owed this all to them—he owed that he could feel the heat and the cold and the chills through his skin and have a blanket or appreciate a breeze.

And he owed that he could consider more than a stabbing through a stomach and the path he would take to avoid the soldiers still alive for a little bit and that he could be more than one who only cared about the next meal and didn’t spend time laughing at rabbits and throwing stones at birds in the sky to miss and see them flap away and _not_ have the rumble in his belly. He could consider a person’s perspective and please them and spite them and know them and Gintoki could understand _Katsura_.

Four walls to a room and two arms and two legs and two eyes and two ears and two knees to a person, nose tongue chin collar toes.

 _…And Katsura—yes, the one with long black hair—Katsura’s an orphan too, right? He was prestigious but then all his family died-- Akane? She…_ And then it came in, and his thoughts seemed to slide into shelves; clar-ity, clarity with a random conversation of one whose name he did not bother to identify.

Gintoki thought-- after all this time with the staring eyes and perfectly modeled kanji letterings with no spilt ink and clutching at umbrellas with not a drop bouncing off his hair and complaining that exploded exactly like _fireworks_ leaving Gintoki exhaling smoke in perfect unison and focus, focus, focus on his studies.

He would use the nickname as a spear, trying to irritate Katsura out of his interest. He could use Zura’s shortcomings as an arrow, trying to disappoint Katsura out of his interest. The sticks and stones could be his origins.

_Zurraa, don’t be so annoying. Zuurraa, don’t be so motherly._

Gintoki ran, dementedly proud of himself in his new acquired skill, ran all the way to his lake where he jumped in and splashed away deer. He only floated for a while, broke the reflective glass of the lake, broke his horizon with only black outlines of trees.

And the next day, and the next, and the next, until he knew the corrections. He made a point never to _listen_ , or obey at all.

Trees that continually grew, turned brown, lost their leaves, grew back, lost, grew, lost, grew. Woven grass for beds and mats and tapestries and all things that would burst if a match were held to them.

1: “Gintoki, mind your p’s and q’s.”

2: “Here, Gintoki. Shoyou got them this morning from the bakery.”

3: “Come in, Gintoki, it’s much too cold out.”

Four, Gintoki snapped and hit Zura over the head.

A grabbing, a holding, a _grounding_ , a mutual grounding. Now that Gintoki could see. I’ll be your general, so when I’m around, you just be Zura.

The way Zura’s eyes widened satisfied Gintoki; the words were spontaneous, but the point had gotten across, definitely. Gintoki pretended to not mean it. Zura pretended that it was business as usual, with a scrappy kid messing with his focus. Now that he spoke Zura, he spoke.

And now that Zura used _hey_ sometimes instead of _hello_ and fell down the rabbit holes with Gintoki looking for adventure and was curious as to how Gintoki climbed trees and he gasped and laughed along with Shoyou’s storytelling now and indulged in Gintoki bringing back little treasures from the town and screamed and clung with Gintoki when a classmate pretended to be a vengeful ghost, though not as loud as Gintoki himself.

Gintoki glared, Gintoki rolled his eyes, he laughed at others’ expenses, he slept outside—he spoke. Spoke more than before, and others looked in surprise and appreciation, when he would look at them right in the eye, and tell.

Fifteen years later, Zura yells and teases Gintoki still, for screwing up the name of a famous feudal lord in his “badass” one-liner. As we go and still go and still go, Gintoki, you'll never remember Lord Ieyasu’s name correctly.


End file.
